Complaints to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will now be assessed by the Classification Board, a body with far more expertise in assessing content in relation to the National Classification Scheme and community standards. Content owners will now be notified, not the hosting provider. There will be an avenue for appeal, and an annual review of the entire list.

Inasmuch as a secret blacklist could ever be compiled transparently, this could do the job - although personally I'll reserve judgment until I've seen the draft legislation. All this represents the kind of bureaucratic improvement that the filter would require.

It's the second thread that's the biggie: a comprehensive review of what constitutes RC material. And not before time.

Despite Senator Conroy's regularly-repeated mantra of RC as "including child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use", it covers a lot more than that. The concerns have been that the definition of RC is inconsistent and doesn't reflect current community standards.

Actually, there isn't a clear definition of RC at all.

As long-time censorship watcher Irene Graham has documented at Libertus.net, there's no definitive list in legislation, nor in documents issued by the Classification Boards or the Classification Policy Branch of the Federal Attorney-General's Department.

Instead, RC exists only as a set of broad but inconsistent guidelines that have been cobbled together by the censorship ministers, often without reference to parliament, and usually without reference to the research on "community standards".

RC has ended up including material that might not be to everyone's tastes but certainly isn't "the worst of the worst", to use Conroy's phrase.

The movie 70K, for instance, about the Melbourne-based graffiti crew of the same name, was refused classification because "it deals with crime (the defacement of public property) in such a way that it offends against the standards of propriety generally acceptable to reasonable adults".

The Peaceful Pill Handbook by Dr Phillip Nitschke and Dr Fiona Stewart was refused classification - not as is commonly believed because it promotes euthanasia, but because "it instructs in the crime of the manufacture of barbiturates". Just like any decent pharmaceutical textbook.

Any depiction of any sexual activity involving any fetish, however mild - such as candle wax or a bit of dressing up in leather - is automatically refused classification. The history of that concept is the laughable history of RC in microcosm.

The review of Refused Classification is expected to take a year. Mandatory internet filtering won't be introduced until it's finished. Meanwhile, some internet service providers will voluntarily block a blacklist of child abuse material - but not the rest of the contentious RC category. With Telstra, Optus and Primus already signed on, that covers 70 per cent of the internet-using population.

And thus everyone gets to feel like they've won something, at least on the surface.

For conservative Christians such as the Australian Christian Lobby, the censorship policy they've been pushing for is still on the table. Though mandatory filtering has been delayed another year, voluntary filtering will at least "protect" a majority of Australians from some of the nasties. It's a start.

Meanwhile they'll have plenty of time to marshall their not inconsiderable lobbying resources into trying to extend the definition of RC.

For opponents of internet filtering, the delay means at least a temporary reprieve from a policy they hate. Voluntary filtering is restricted to child abuse material, the blocking of which is presumably non-controversial. Even if it is, they can choose an ISP that delivers an unfiltered internet.

Again, they'll have a chance to lobby for a definition of RC that better reflects their view of current community standards. Their challenge will be lobbying with as much discipline and consistency of message as their conservative Christian opponents.

For those who don't care either way - the majority of the population, by my reckoning - this confusing issue might just disappear from the media for a while. Blessed relief.

For the vendors of internet censorship equipment, well, they don't care whether internet filtering is mandatory or voluntary, they've still got a market for their magic boxes.

The chatter on Twitter this afternoon would indicate that many of the anti-filter spokespeople have already noticed that nothing has, in fact, changed. They can still portray the ALP as the party that censors.

Opposition spokesperson Senator Tony Smith has labelled it a "humiliating backdown", but has yet to declare what they'd do instead. Could they still pick up votes by letting the punters assume they wouldn't have a similar policy?

Stilgherrian is an opinionated and irreverent writer, broadcaster and consultant based in Sydney, Australia.